In my life, I've lived in very different kinds of places - very tiny rooms when I was young. And you do learn to cope with it. The funny thing is, as you begin to inhabit larger places, it's very interesting how quickly you adapt to your space. What seems enormous at first becomes natural after a few weeks.

It's extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can't get a job on a ship unless you have seaman's paper's, and you can't get seaman's papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

Guilt kept me going. It was impossible not to blame myself for what had happened, but even guilt was a comfort. It was a human feeling, a sign that I was still attached to the same world that other men lived in.

To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

We're outsiders, and so when we walk through the city, we're there and not there at the same time, participating and observing simultaneously.

After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two years.

Money's important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don't have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.